‘You look like you do,’ said Kevin, who never missed an opportunity.

‘And I did hear something – the tiniest creak of what I thought was his boot, and it seemed to be coming round the base of the bed. I couldn’t hear my heart any more – it had stopped. So I thought “Well, I can’t lie here and wait to be shot. I’ve got to take the risk.” And so I rolled back under the bed. And sure enough, about a second later I saw his boots in the gap that I’d just left. The fronds on the edge of the bedspread were just moving slightly from where I’d hit them, and I had this terrible time, lying there wondering if he’d notice them, thinking that he must notice them. They seemed so obvious to me, so conspicuous. He seemed to stand there forever. I don’t know what he was looking at – there wasn’t much to see, just a picture of a long bridge across a ravine, in Switzerland or somewhere I think. Then the boots turned and I could hear him more distinctly, going over to the cupboards and opening them and searching through them. Then he said to the lady “Come on, next house”, and out they went. I lay there for so long – I thought it might have been a trap – but at last Kevin came and got me and told me they’d gone. I’d had a pretty bad time though – well, I don’t need to tell you guys what it was like.

‘Corrie talked to someone too, in the kitchen, didn’t you?’ she said, looking at Corrie, who gave a little nod. ‘That’s when you were told about the casualties from our two fights with them?’

‘Yes,’ Corrie said. ‘I think they caused a bit of a sensation. I talked to a funny little man who looked about fifty. I don’t know his name either. He didn’t want to talk to me much. He was just so scared that we’d be caught. But he told me there was a bit of guerilla activity going on. He was the one who had this theory of the “clean” invasion, too.’

‘So,’ said Robyn, ‘that was the end of our secret chats with the work parties. We made our way back to our hideout and stayed there till dark.’ She looked at Homer while she said the next bit. It was like they felt a bit guilty, but they were defiant too about the way they’d done things. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I know we had all these carefully worked out plans about Kev and Corrie spying on the Showground and so on, but it’s different when you get there. The whole time we were in Wirrawee we didn’t want to lose sight of each other.’

‘Young love,’ I said. ‘It’s beautiful.’

Robyn continued without missing a beat. ‘So that night we stayed together again. For a start we walked out to the highway, to see what was going on. And it is being heavily used. We stayed an hour and there were two convoys just in that time. One had forty vehicles and the other had twenty-nine. So it’s doing big business, for a little old rural road. It hasn’t seen that much excitement since the surf carnival. After that we came back into town and went over to the Showground. That was bloody scary too, I suppose because of what happened to you guys on your visit there. In fact I thought it was pretty gutsy of Corrie and Kev to go there again. And believe me, it is a dangerous place. See, they’ve got their headquarters and their barracks there, as well as our folks, so I guess that’s why they guard it so heavily. They’ve cut down most of the trees in the carpark, so we couldn’t find any approach to it that would provide any cover – I suppose that’s why they cut them down. And they’ve put rolls of wire all the way around it, about fifty metres from the main fence. I didn’t know there was that much wire in Wirrawee. And they’ve rigged up new lights, floodlights, which have got the entire surrounding area lit up like it’s daytime. There’s a lot of very confused birds flying round there. All we could do was peek from Racecourse Road, which we did for an hour or so. I guess we were too scared to go any closer, but honestly, I don’t think there’s much to see, just a lot of sentries and patrols wandering round. If anyone has any ideas of rolling up there in combat uniform and shooting their way in and rescuing everybody, I think they can go back to sleep. Fantasyland is for TV. This is real life.’

To be honest, which I swore I’d be, we’d all had those delusions at times. They were only daydreams, but they were powerful daydreams, to liberate our families, to fix everything, to be heroes. But in a secret, guilty way, of which I was ashamed, I felt relieved to have the daydream so firmly squashed. In reality the prospect of doing something like that was so horrifying and frightening that it made me ill to think of it. We would surely die if we tried it, die with our guts blown out and spread across the dirt of the Showground carpark, to have flies feed on us as we turned rotten in the sunlight. It was an image I couldn’t get out of my head, probably born from all the dead sheep I’d seen over the years.

‘We were quite glad to get out of there,’ Robyn went on. ‘We moved back into town and just flitted around like little bats, trying to make contact with dentists or anyone else. Which reminds me,’ she said, smiling sweetly at Lee, ‘it’s time I took your stitches out.’ Lee looked nervous. I was trying to imagine Kevin flitting. It was hard to picture. ‘We didn’t find anyone though,’ Robyn said. ‘Not a soul. There’s probably still a few people around, but they’re lying very low.’ She grinned, and relaxed. ‘And that concludes our report to the nation. Thank you and good night.’

‘Hey, we could end up being the nation,’ Kevin said. ‘We could be the only ones left free, so we’d be the government and everything, wouldn’t we? Bags being Prime Minister.’

‘I’ll be the Police Commissioner,’ Chris said. We all chose jobs, or got given them. Homer was Minister for Defence, and Chief of the General Staff. Lee was Pensioner of the Year, because of his leg. Robyn wanted to be Minister for Health but got Archbishop instead. Corrie said, ‘I’ll be Minister for Kevin’. She really could be sickening at times. Fi was Attorney General, because of her parents. I got named as Poet Laureate, which I was quite pleased about.

Maybe it was that which first planted in Robyn’s head the idea of my writing all this down.

‘So anyway,’ Chris said eventually, ‘your turn. What have you guys been doing back here, apart from working on your tans?’

They’d already admired the chook yard, and they’d sampled the eggs. But we told them the rest, especially about the Hermit’s hut, which we figured would make a great back-up base for us.

‘I want to find a way out of the back of Hell, to the Holloway River,’ I said. ‘I’m sure that’s where this creek must go. And if we had a back way out of here we’d be in an even safer position. Once we’re in the Holloway we can get to that whole Risdon area.’

Lee and I didn’t tell them about the metal box with the Hermit’s papers. There was no particular reason. We hadn’t even discussed not telling them. It just seemed too private.

‘Listen, you know these chooks,’ Kevin said, ‘I’ve been thinking about other livestock we could have. I’m no vegetarian, and I want my meat. And I mink I’ve got the answer.’

We all waited expectantly. He leaned forward and said one word, in a solemn, almost reverent tone.

‘Ferrets.’

‘Oh no,’ Corrie squealed. ‘Yuk! They’re disgusting! I hate them.’

Kevin looked wounded at this disloyalty from the one person he could normally count on. ‘They’re not disgusting,’ he said, sounding hurt. ‘They’re clean and they’re intelligent and they’re very friendly.’

‘Yeah, so friendly they’ll run up your trouser leg,’ Homer said.

‘What are they?’ Fi asked. ‘Do you eat them?’

‘Yeah, between two slices of bread. And you don’t kill them first. You eat them alive, as they squirm and squeal in the sandwich. They’re the world’s freshest food.’ That was Kevin, being funny. He proceeded to give Fi a lesson on ferrets, during which it became obvious that he didn’t know much about them either.